A place at the table ... the Man Booker prize award ceremony in London, photographed in 2009.
Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

An anomaly in the Man Booker prize rules that made books published in Ireland ineligible for the £50,000 award because they were not published in the UK has been removed, after years of frustration among Irish presses.

The award, which changed its rules three years ago to allow any writer writing in English and published in the UK to enter, announced on Monday that Irish publishers would also now be permitted to submit novels for the prize. Previously, titles such as Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones, which was initially published by independent Irish press Tramp, were ineligible because Tramp is based in Dublin. When the novel, deemed “exceptional” in a Guardian review, was later picked up by Edinburgh-based publisher Canongate, it was then longlisted for 2017’s Man Booker prize.

Why are Irish publishers shut out of the Man Booker prize?

Read more

“Solar Bones is not just one of the most interesting works of literary fiction of 2016, it’s one of the most impressive novels of the decade,” wrote Tramp’s co-founder Sarah Davis-Goff in the Guardian in 2016, mourning how independent presses are “doing the heavy lifting when it comes to finding exceptional literary talent”, but that “ambitious Irish authors have to give serious consideration to an offer from a UK publisher over an Irish one if they have the Man Booker in their sights”.

The prize said that it had been aware of the issue for a number of years, and that “the aim of the new rule is to ensure independent Irish publishers are given the same opportunity to be recognised by the prize as Irish publishers who have headquarters in the UK and are already eligible”. It added that following consultation with Publishing Ireland and the Irish Association of Book Publishers, “it was agreed that given the special relationship between the UK and Irish publishing markets – whereby most Irish publishers release books simultaneously in Ireland and the UK – all Irish publishers should be eligible”.

Booker prize foundation literary director Gaby Wood said: “We’re delighted to support Irish publishers and the writers whose work they bring into the world. So much exciting new fiction is being written and published concurrently in Ireland and the UK that we felt it was only right to acknowledge and honour that.”

Davis-Goff said on Monday that Tramp was “over the moon that we’ll be able to submit the incredible writers we publish to this prestigious prize for the first time ... this new eligibility really affords us an opportunity to grow, and more importantly ensures the Irish literary community as a whole really benefits from the quality of Irish fiction. We’re so grateful to Gaby Wood and everyone at the Man Booker for including us and can’t wait to see what happens next.”

Publishing Ireland president Ronan Colgan pointed to titles including Ed O’Loughlin’s Not Untrue and Not Unkind, and Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart, which were both initially published by the Irish operations of Penguin and Doubleday, but only became eligible for the Booker when entered under their UK counterparts.

“The UK and Irish markets are, in all respects, deeply intertwined, with books being simultaneously released by publishers in each market, so this felt like an anomaly,” said Colgan. “More importantly, it created a situation in which independent Irish literary publishers would struggle to hold on to their authors once they reached a certain level of success. Given the obvious prestige of the Man Booker prize, these publishers would not want to stand in their way and would understand why they needed to leave. Our concern, as an industry, was that this could lead to Irish literary publishers, with the ability to find these authors, not being able to grow and flourish.”

Colgan hailed the change in eligibility as “wonderful news, not just for Irish publishers and Irish writers but for our intertwined literary heritage”.

This year’s Booker prize will be judged by the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, the crime writer Val McDermid, the cultural critic Leo Robson, the feminist writer and critic Jacqueline Rose and the artist and graphic novelist Leanne Shapton. The longlist will be announced in July.